Featured posts:

Memorial Day came and went and, although it would have been more appropriate and highly more important for me to be memorializing the lives of those who died for the cause of freedom, I wasn’t.

I was memorializing a love affair with a body of water.

I’ve been caught completely off guard with my connection to this place. Seeing hundreds of people flock here this sunny summer-esque weekend in bikinis and hats and sunglasses, riding watercraft of all sorts while their dogs splash after sticks and balls and their children frolic around in life-jacketed mayhem. It’s unjust. Unfair. Borderline inhumane that I should have to share my lake with them.

Who do you think you are taking advantage of her in this sunshine and showing up only when she looks her best, sparkling under that azure sky and mirroring those perfectly puffy clouds? Who do you think you are dipping into her in her first days of freedom from the frost? Disgusting. Despicable.

You may think you know her at her best, but you don’t know her like I do. You don’t love her like I do. You don’t watch her breathe in and out in the early dawn. You don’t sit on her empty shores at the last light of day just to be near her and gently skip rocks over her surface. You’ve never stood on her docks and supported her while she braced herself against the violence of another storm. You haven’t seen her challenged and resist. You didn’t weep with her as she succumbed to the iciness of Winter and folded into herself for months. You don’t sit with her in her silence. You don’t scream and rant and shake your fist at her in emotional outbursts that she, only she, has the decency to listen to calmly and without judgement. You’ve never smiled with her as she lifts her face to the sun and melts into it’s warmth. You’ve never watched her gently open her eyes to the sky and reflect on her place in this world. You’ve never been there for her.

But, I have. And she has healed me in so many ways. And I know her. And she knows me.